Very simply told stories of warriors, statesmen, explorers, scientists, inventors, men and women of letters, and others. Featured are Marquette in Iowa, Penn and the Indians, Thomas Smith and the beginning of rice culture in South Carolina, Franklin and the ants, Putnam and the wolf, and dozens of other stories. Ages 7-9

156 pages

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FRANKLIN ASKS THE SUNSHINE SOMETHING

[32] ONE day Franklin was eating dinner at the house of a
friend. The lady of the house, when she poured out the
coffee, found that it was not hot.

She said, "I am sorry that the coffee is cold. It is
because the servant forgot to scour the coffee-pot.
Coffee gets cold more quickly when the coffee-pot is not
bright."

This set Franklin to thinking. He thought that a black
or dull thing would cool more quickly that a white or
bright one. That made him think that a black thing
would take in heat more quickly than a white one.

He wanted to find out if this were true or not. There
was nobody who knew, so there was
nobody to ask. But
Franklin thought that he would ask the sunshine. Maybe
the sunshine would tell him whether a black thing would
heat more quickly than a white thing.

But how could he ask the sunshine?

There was snow on the ground. Franklin spread a white
cloth on the snow. Then he spread a black cloth on the
snow near the white one. When he came to look at them,
he saw that the snow under
[33] the black cloth melted away
much sooner than that under the white cloth.

That is the way that the sunshine told him that black
would take in heat more quickly than white. After he
had found this out, many people got white hats to wear
in the summer time. A white hat is cooler than a black
one.

Some time when there is snow on the ground, you can
take a white and a black cloth and ask the sunshine the
same question.

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